In this video (1min 22sec) from 1994 Dick Cheney says Invading Baghdad Would Create Quagmire. In this interview from April 15th, 1994, Dick Cheney reveals the reasons why invading Baghdad and toppling Saddam Hussein wouldn't be a great idea. He also stipulates that "not very many" American soldiers' lives were worth losing to take out Saddam during the Gulf War. "If we'd gone to Baghdad, we've have been all alone. There wouldn't have been anyone with us. It would have been a US occupation of Iraq. None of the Arab forces that were willing to fight with us in Kuwait were willing to invade Iraq. Once you got to Iraq and took it over and took down Saddam Hussein's government then what are you going to put in it's place?..."
"That's a very volatile part of the world and if you take down the central government in Iraq, you can easily end up seeing pieces of Iraq fly off. Part of it the Syrians would like to have in the west. Part of eastern Iraq, would like to claim and fought over for eight years. In the north you've got the Kurds. If the Kurds spin loose and join with the Kruds in Turkey then you've threatened the territorial integrity of Turkey. It's a quagmire, if you go that far and try to take over Iraq..."
"The other thing was casualties. Everyone was impressed with the fact that we were able to do our job with as few casualties as we had. But for the 146 Americans killed in action and their families it wasn't a cheap war. And the question for the president in terms of whether we went on to Baghdad, took additional casualties in an effort to get Saddam Hussein was 'how many dead Americans is Saddam worth?'. And his judgement was 'not very many.' And I think we got it right."
